Re: [Gen-art] Gen-ART LC review of draft-ietf-grow-route-leak-problem-definition-04

["Sriram, Kotikalapudi (Fed)" <[e-mail]>]

Pete,

Thank you for your review and comments. I'll be happy to incorporate all the changes you've suggested.
I've been a bit swamped. What is a reasonable turnaround time for these?
OK if I get this done within the next week or two?
When I am done making the changes, should I upload a version -05 
or should I email the .txt or .xml only to you/Gen-art team? 

Sriram
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From: Pete Resnick [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2016 12:28 PM
To: General Area Review Team <[e-mail]>; [e-mail]; [e-mail]; IETF discussion list <[e-mail]>
Subject: Gen-ART LC review of draft-ietf-grow-route-leak-problem-definition-04

I am the assigned Gen-ART reviewer for this draft. The General Area
Review Team (Gen-ART) reviews all IETF documents being processed
by the IESG for the IETF Chair. Please treat these comments just
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For more information, please see the FAQ at
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Document: draft-ietf-grow-route-leak-problem-definition-04
Reviewer: Pete Resnick
Review Date: 2016-03-21
IETF LC End Date: 2016-03-28
Summary: This draft is on the right track but has open issues, described in this review.
Major issues:
None.
Minor issues:
* Figure 1, along with the discussion of it in section 3, was confusing to me. First of all, am I correct that the example displays two leaks? That is, there's the leak from AS3 to ISP2, and then there are the propagated leaks from ISP2 to the rest of the world. Also, "(P)" seems to be used as both a leaked prefix (from ISP1 through AS3 to ISP2 and then propagated from there) as well as what looks to be a normal prefix update between ISP1 and ISP2. Are all of the occurrences of "(P)" in Figure 1 identical? Or is the prefix update between ISP1 and ISP2 also a leak? What leaks is Figure 1 intended to show?
* In 3.1: "The leak often succeeds because...". Do you really means "succeeds" and not "occurs"? If so, what does "succeeds" mean in this context?
* The description in section 3.5, starting from "However", really needs a complete rewrite. It's ungrammatical to the point that I'm not really sure I understand what it is trying to say.
Nits/editorial comments:
* I've mentioned before that I find the "academic research paper" style a bit jarring in IETF documents. I particularly don't like the use of "we" and "us", since it's not clear whether "we" is the authors (which is how it's used in academic papers, but is inappropriate for an IETF document), the WG, the IETF, etc. Instead, I would replace all instances of "we" with "this document", or simply re-word into the passive, since a subject is rarely needed for these sentences. For example, the abstract could be rewritten as such:
A systemic vulnerability of the Border Gateway Protocol routing
system, known as 'route leaks', has received significant attention in
recent years. Frequent incidents that result in significant
disruptions to Internet routing are labeled "route leaks", but to
date a common definition of the term has been lacking. This document
provides a working definition of route leaks, keeping in mind the
real occurrences that have received significant attention. Further,
this document attempts to enumerate (though not exhaustively)
different types of route leaks based on observed events on the
Internet. The aim is to provide a taxonomy that covers several forms
of route leaks that have been observed and are of concern to Internet
user community as well as the network operator community.
Please do similar edits throughout.
Similarly, the referencing of authors by name seems like bad form for an IETF document.
OLD
This document builds on and extends earlier work in the IETF by
Dickson [draft-dickson-sidr-route-leak-def][draft-dickson-sidr-route-
leak-reqts].
NEW
This document builds on and extends earlier work in the IETF
[draft-dickson-sidr-route-leak-def][draft-dickson-sidr-route-leak-
reqts].
END
OLD
Mauch [Mauch] observes that these are
anomalies and potentially route leaks because very large ISPs such
as ATT, Sprint, Verizon, and Globalcrossing do not in general buy
transit services from each other. However, he also notes that
there are exceptions when one very large ISP does indeed buy
transit from another very large ISP, and accordingly exceptions
are made in his detection algorithm for known cases.
NEW
[Mauch] observes that these are anomalies
and potentially route leaks because very large ISPs such as ATT,
Sprint, Verizon, and Globalcrossing do not in general buy transit
services from each other. However, it also notes that there are
exceptions when one very large ISP does indeed buy transit from
another very large ISP, and accordingly exceptions are made in its
detection algorithm for known cases.
END
* Last paragraph in section 2: I'm left wondering what sorts of things that other folks might consider leaks aren't covered by the definition. Perhaps you want to mention that?
* In 3.6, when you say "more specifics", are you using that as a noun to mean "more specific prefixes"? It's very hard to read in its current form.
* Section 5 is superfluous. I'd delete it.
* On a side note, I must say that the writing style of the "Example incidents" caused me quite a bit of giggling. "Examples include symmetrical book stacking, just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947, and the biggest interdimensional crossrip since the Tunguska blast of 1909 [GhostBusters1984]." Reading them aloud helps. :-) (No need for a change; they're fine as is. They just sound funny to a person not in the field.)
pr
-- 
Pete Resnick http://www.qualcomm.com/%7Epresnick/
Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. - [phone]